Tangled

Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other. John 13:34-35 (The Message)

Poet, Maya Angelou, has said many extraordinary things in her lifetime. I have a website of her quotes marked as one of my favorites. Statements like: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away,” “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” and “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song,” all inspire and give a reason to pause and think. But, one of my favorites just makes me laugh: “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” I think I do a pretty good job of enjoying rainy days. I like being home, curled up on the couch with a good book or working on my glass in the garage. Sometimes, I use the time to clean house or bake. I like rainy days. As for lost luggage, I’ve not experienced that so can’t say how I would react. But, when it comes to tangled Christmas lights for our house, please do not judge me on my behavior! Wads of wires and crisscrossed bulbs make me crazy. I cannot stand how they get more confused the harder you try to straighten them out. I’ve never been one for puzzles either. I just don’t have the patience. Half the time, I end up with broken bulbs as I snatch the strands so hard that the bulbs hit the deck and pop. In years past, we have always used the multicolored “big bulbs” or the old fashioned kind that my family had as a child. Husband prefers the tiny white lights, but since I put them up, I get to choose what kind we have. But, this year, I left the old strings of lights in their bin in the storage shed and invested in new LED Christmas lights. While they are still multicolored and the larger size bulbs, the lights are not quite as garish and seem softer. Oddly, all of our neighbors have commented on how much they like our new lights. I never thought that they noticed! The good thing about these lights, in addition to the savings I should be getting on electricity, is that the bulbs are plastic! So, no more broken bulbs, hopefully. Still, I am sure that when the strings come down and go back into storage, time will play its mischief and tangle them all up again. Life is like that, isn’t it? Emotions, relationships all get tangled when we aren’t looking. We have to invest the time into patiently untangling them by communicating and listening to each other. Because you can tell a lot about a person not just in how they handle tangled lights, but how they love and care about others.